


Greener Pastures

by nostalgic_breton_girl



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgic_breton_girl/pseuds/nostalgic_breton_girl
Summary: In which Julienne and Marcurio, taking a coach to Riften, are held up by a giant crossing the road.
Relationships: Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Marcurio
Kudos: 5





	Greener Pastures

‘Why have we stopped?’

The coachman put out a hand, bade Marcurio speak a little more quietly; indicated, a distance ahead, the figure of a giant, and two mammoths. There was smoke rising behind them, from the giant’s camp; it was quite unusual, to see one so close to the road, and – apparently – it was no great leap to guess the problem.

‘If we don’t bother them, they won’t bother us,’ said Marcurio at once: ‘we must get to Riften, we can’t slow down.’

‘Do you want to get crushed?’

For the figures were not standing: were not merely watching the passage of the carriage. No, they were moving, though painfully slowly, towards the road, – the giant in the rear, and the mammoths in front, a stately little procession.

‘They’re crossing,’ the coachman explained: ‘you’ve never had that before? – No, maybe you haven’t. – Cyrodiil, hmm?’

‘Like sheep coming down from the mountain pastures,’ Julienne murmured, and raised a sleepy head to see the proceedings.

‘There you go. A bit of patience, we’ll be off in a bit.’

A bit became – in Marcurio’s impatient metropolitan mindset – rather too long; the giant did not walk in a perfectly straight line, nor did he have any qualms about halting – halting the mammoths, too – to satisfy an itch which he had procured; then continuing, half an eye on the carriage, the other half on the beaten track.

‘What’s so good about that side of the road?’

‘Gods only know. – Leave him in peace; probably he knows what he’s doing.’

‘Glad _he_ does.’

And Marcurio dropped back onto his seat; leaned in closer to Julienne, and muttered:

‘Why do _we_ have to get this obstruction, and not the Thalmor?’

But Julienne was calmer than he – half from fatigue, but half from the sensation that, for a moment, the world and its anxieties had hung in the balance...

The giant at last came to a point safely on the other side, and shepherded the mammoths over the hillocks: a gesture he surely repeated, day-in, day-out, just as the shepherds in Bruma, who took their flocks back, and forth, and back, and forth, as predictable and as natural as the sun which guided their endless cycle.

And the coachman sighed, smiled back at his passengers; at last – at last! – took up his reins and his whip, and started up again.

‘There, see,’ he said: ‘told you we’d be going in no time.’

‘It’s been at _least_ fifteen minutes,’ muttered Marcurio.

‘You were taught to tell the time in Cyrodiil,’ the coachman replied: ‘it’s different, in Skyrim; different again, in giant-country...’

And really, the sun had not moved _that_ much, in the time they had waited; and there was no sign of the Thalmor behind them, or ahead; and Julienne, who had been a nervous wreck on leaving Windhelm, seemed curiously comforted by their unforeseen delay. She sat up, leaned against Marcurio; looked behind, saw the giant beyond the outcrops, put up a hand, briefly, even as the giant raised his – raised his hand, slowly; looked up at that endless sky; and, at last, put his stick to his back and scratched it, with all the grace and profundity of a man at ease.


End file.
